When City Planners and Politicians look at future planning and budgets they have lots of hard decisions to make.  The first being supporting existing infrastructure or working on new ones.  This is what I call the "E-Bike Political Paradox".  People need the existing car oriented infrastructure to continue to work and grow so they can also work and grow.  At the same time, officials are faced with the needs of the future.  They need to see ahead for their constituents and beyond.  

There have been many inflection points in American Society.  The choice to embrace the automobile allowed for expansive growth across the entirety of our Country.  For Good and Bad, it has allowed us to become what we are today.  Even that deeply incumbent set of businesses is going through their own rebuilding today.  Competing with the future, in Tesla and other new manufacturers here and overseas.  With the future being Electrification of mobility, Planners and Officials need to consider a more holistic view of the city, its future and direction of Growth.  

Many Governments, local and federal, have offered and considered rebates to allow many more to access the future as early as possible.  These rebates have centered around the auto industry, but more recently citizens and officials alike have come to recognize the E-Bike and E-Motorcycle as highly efficient and fun ways to provide mobility to their lives.  In our customer and citizen interactions we've found that pricing is somewhat a concern.  With the number one concern being road safety.  Especially in the E-bike potential and current commuter base.   

With so many different concerns of current and future mobility infrastructure, Planners and Officials are placed in the most difficult situations of decision making.  How do they allocate their funds appropriately to make the greatest impacts for today while keeping them moving towards the future.

Rebates are Great, but for Who?

Ok, so little bit of political mass population operations theory here.  The Carrot, the Stick, the Sermon and now The Nudge.  These are all things used by governments to encourage large populations to embrace change.  Rebates are generally viewed as "Carrots".  In today's environment you could call filling your gas tank "the Stick", ouch!  We've all heard "The Sermon", "It's the War, you have to pay more."  And before you go any farther with that, please, take it to Twitter, not about the politics here.  Then there's the Nudge.  I prefer this method, it's like Mom hitting you with the guilty reminder of what you should be doing.  Eventually, you hear the voice in your head and take the appropriate action.  How much any one or mixture of those works depends on individual psychologies.  Applied across the whole, you can create the greatest amount of behavioral change.  

Rebates are generally viewed as temporary.  This is because they only encourage on part of the overall required behavioral changes.  The idea being if you got one, you'll use it.  At the same time, the rebate creates a psychology of decreased value.  Since someone was able to get something for so much less than what it would normal be in an open market environment it creates a false view of lower value.  This is a large reason why I'm not the biggest fan of rebates provided by governments.  If the rebate is a direct financial provision of the manufacturer, that makes more sense to me.  This creates a direct understanding that the manufacturer is doing this to gain market share and the pricing will be higher.  Think crowd sourcing campaigns.  You get a discounted price for buying something early, that's basically a manufacturers rebate at point of sale.  

"Why should the manufacturer offer a rebate, John?  Makes no sense to me." 

I feel the same way about government rebates.  It's basically paying yourself back for buying something you might not of in the first place.  It tells me you might have had somewhere better for that money to go.  Of course E-bike manufacturers and retailers support it, it means you'll artificially come buy more product from them.  Then they can go to more investors and say, "See, people want there, we need more money."  Again, it's artificial.  And you might think as a PEV Marketplace we'd want this.  Besides, our E-motorcycles fall right inline with most the requirements of the rebates being offered or considered.  Makes some of them only a few hundred dollars some places.  

But we want a real market.  One that isn't spending government subsidies to over charging brands disguised as "rebates".  

We Took a Totally Different Approach

There's lots of companies out there that aren't going to like what I'm saying here.  And they're really not going to like it if Government Officials read and understand this too.  But here it is:

Government Rebates for Ebikes only Help Ebike Companies

There, it's out there, I said it and I'm sure many agree and disagree.  It may have helped you buy an ebike from a company that really could've sold it to you for less and still made a profit.  That's been our approach from the beginning.  We're not looking for hand outs from the Government and essentially the People of the USA, but rather their Honest Purchase from us and into the Electric Future.  We reduce prices to bring you comparable units while still making a reasonable profit.  We could charge more.  After all, the goal of a company is to make profits.  But for us, before profit, comes happy customers, who got great deals and love the way these things can change their lives.

We can do this without adding excessive overhead.  Those are the top 2 goals of a business, happy customers and efficient operations.  Profit will cascade from there.

Our Request for Officials

We are all for rebates and if already offered in your area it doesn't make any sense to pull them back.  What we would ask is that there be more focus on the infrastructure and spending.  As a business owner that offers many of the same models for less, I know that part can be done from our end.  Regardless of our own friendly competition, making them more accessible to everyone should be our collective goal as businesses.  From your end as an Official, People Centric planning for safer roadways that encourage bicycle, E-bike and E-motorcycle traffic.  There are many multi-decade and multi-generational examples in European cities that can be easily adopted and added here.   

Las Vegas, being a newer city and mostly a grid layout lends itself well to this type of future planning.  It's 215 loop provides outside quadrant access to the interior of the city.  While the cross of the 15 and 95 can allow for more direct access, for cars.  Interior areas get slowed down for safer travel.  The decreasing of reaction time/speed ratios by drivers will lead to decreased accidents and deaths.  An interesting side effect of slowed traffic and traffic on bike/e-bikes, local businesses and neighborhood thrive and become deeper communities.  Again, there are many examples of this in Europe going back to the 70's showing impact and yield over decades.  With the city layout Las Vegas has, the addition of more tunnels under the Strip, we think Las Vegas could lead the way in this planning and design.

Our Request of Riders and Citizens

No one is going to argue that our roads could be safer in general.  After the recent pandemic traffic fatalities have skyrocketed.  If you agree, and you would like to feel safe riding a bicycle/ebike/emotorcycle, please contact your local City, County, State politicians.  Let them know what you've told me.  I ride almost daily and multiple times each ride I avoid a collision.  Once in a while it's even my mistake.  No one's perfect, but overwhelmingly, I'm dodging someone in a car not looking or not caring.  Tell, them about your experience too.  Tell them you want safer streets to ride on.  Tell them that if they were safer you'd save money and have a better quality of life.  That your mobility shouldn't be oppressed by the high cost of fuel, but lifted up by the abundance of Electricity!

Before I started E-Powersport.com, to help people get affordable electric transportation, I was a Tech Recruiter.  For over 20 years I operated counter to the normal operations of most recruiters.  I'm honest, up front and tell you straight how it is at the company.  Over the years and many successful placements, I earned a reputation as one of the few recruiters in the industry that operates with exceptional Integrity.

And perhaps that's what drew me to Electric Transportation.  As I looked across the landscape, I saw very little integrity.  I'm not just talking about these, "charge you $2k and never talk to you again" companies.  That's just become the norm.  I'm talking about the most of the media that covers it.

There was a time, before Internet, where what you read in a newspaper or magazine was validated multiple times.  Where you couldn't pay for a story or review of a product, but had to get honest and truly informative stories out there.  As our media has grown, we've seen the advent of "fake news", "false stories" and advertising based media assets.  When you start looking at Electric Vehicle news it can be hard to distinguish the honest actors from the paid shills.  And there's a lot of them.

Many of the media spaces I thought were doing it for the story, have shown to me since starting this, they're in it for the payday.  Not the candy bar but the Monetary Support of the companies for which they review.  Great example, one of the Kollter dealers paid a major EV review website, $10K to review the Kollter ES-1.  Interesting that we never saw it hit 75mph as claimed.  Because it can't.  It's interesting that the reviewer doesn't actually dig into the Kollter as you might expect, but instead, gives it glowing commentary.  And you can find this same format across most of their stories.  I found myself asking, "Wow, how much do they charge for these factory tours.  Must be like a $20K fee or something."

Now, don't start to think that it's just that one group that get paid to tell you how wonderful, mediocre E-bikes and EVs are, but many more out there do the same.  The big problem is that none of them are acting in YOUR best interests.  They're acting in their own, by taking the money and the interests of their financial backers.  This is the same with many of the YouTube reviews you'll see.  Like, why is a woman who likes to fish in a bikini telling you about how great this Ebike is that some "branded" Ebike company sent her?  She knows absolutely nothing about them and you're all just watching her because she's fishing in a bikini.  If it helps sell them to you and instill a sense of integrity for you, I will do a YouTube video in a bikini with our E-bikes.  Not going to look near as good, but you'll get how serious I am about this issue.  

"But, John, you sell Ebikes and e-Motorcycles aren't you going to tell us how good they are so we buy them from you?"

Yes and No.  If you saw our Kollter ES-1 disassembly video you know that we may sell it to you, but still want you to know and be happy with your purchase.  Even at the cost of our dealership license, we gave you the straight dope on those units.  And, for everything we sell, we will continue to do so.  I say, what we sell, because I've already made a short clip to explain how we Will Not, review units we're not selling.  We see that as an unethical approach for a Retail business.  Every time I see other dealers reviewing units they don't sell the summation ends with, "We wouldn't sell this for reasons XXX, but you can buy our more expensive unit that we prefer."  Well of course you prefer it, you sell it!  We see this as a conflict of interest.  

"Who, oh who will think of the consumer!?"

Just as we've found many a questionable actor in this media section of the industry we have also found those that are honest and operate with integrity.  Similar to recruiting, they are few and far between.  These teams operate for the story.  It keeps them from having any unconscious bias for or against the product.  Some may take a fee for their time, but the reviews stand based on the experience.

Some of these are:

Anything Action Magazine - When we've had discussions with editors from this group of media assets, we found they are truly interested in the story and wouldn't even think of taking a Reviewer's Fee.  That is the true identifier of Honest Media.

The Inja on YouTube- This team has produced some amazing materials.  Not just in the review category, but also in the DIY EV category.  Best part about them, as a company they will take your money, but the review is the review.  If your product sucks, it sucks, if it rocks, it rocks.  But they don't create Reviewer Fluff.  

SurRonster on YouTube - He does mostly riding videos with his crew, but still has some great review and assembly/DIY category stuff.  So far, I haven't seen him shill on anything.  Plus, when I offered to pay him for a review, he declined.  He showed and we discussed how he's more interested in the content and creation than getting a payday.  Made props and respect out to that him!

We've also started the production of a truly non-biased set of tools to help you make the most informed decision when making your electric purchase.  We have our Ebike Buyers' Comparison tool.  This is an always updating tool, that has some very exciting developments coming.  You can compare some of the top brands in the industry to the units we carry and their own.  This is a great objective tool to help you make sure you're getting the best overall value for your dollar.  Not just promises of a good time.  We already have more tools to implement that will work together to help you make sure you're making not just the best purchase, but the best purchase for you.

     It doesn't take long for someone looking to buy a new E-bike to quickly realize that these machines boast great distances per charge!  They are amazing and why would you ever step in a car again?!?!  Well, there's a common downside to those wonderfully high 40/60/80/100+ mile per charge rating from most companies...... they're NOT REAL!  That's right, that's what I said, they are at best a guesstimated calculation to present a favorable number to you.  Because who wants to spend $1500+ on transportation that won't even get you down the street let alone across town.  But we at E-powersport.com don't believe in over inflating our numbers, much to the happiness of our investors too.  

       In the rest of this Blog Article we'll discuss how you, yes you, maybe even you, but I'm not so sure about that guy, can easily tell how much distance you can realistically expect.  There is some basic math involved and we're going to look at it from 2 different number calculations, but in the end, you'll be able to confidently go into any bike shop and tell them the realistic #s and if they're full of shit or not.  Which is your right as a consumer and potential customer.

First, let's explain why companies label their E-bikes with such high numbers as to lead you to disappointment.  I'm going to be a little absurd here, but you'll get the point.  When other E-bike companies test an E-bike's distance capability, they first go through the company and poll their staff to see who has the smallest and lightest 13 year old.  Thirteen as that's about grown up enough to handle a motorized vehicle.  This 98lb Tween is then told they will get a pony or go-cart if they pedal the E-bike on level 2 until their little legs fall off.  Sometimes they get to take a break to use the bathroom, but normally they make them wait till the battery runs out.  Luckily, the components are waterproof incase of an accident.  They then chase the child with small dogs to help keep them pedaling and when done, they round up to the nearest Tens place, yielding those wonderfully high milage numbers we're all used to seeing.  

*This is an absurd joke to demonstrate the absurdity of what is actually done in testing*

     Now, I don't know about you, but the last time I weighed 98lbs I was 10 years old.  Yeah, I was, still kind of am, the chubby kid.  Which works for you, since we rate our units on being able to move my 210lbs around.  So, when you see a distance rating on our website, you know some chunky guy was able to get 60+ miles out of it and your waifiness should be able to go a bit farther.  All that is great when it comes to buying from us, but what if you did the dirty deed and bought from someone else.  Well, I can't fault you for it, not everyone knows about us yet.  But here's how you can do a little math and make sure you know, for sure, what you're buying vs. what's being said on the marketing flyer:

To give things more context, let's look at a competitor's E-bike, the Himiway Zebra.  Himiway claims that it's 750w motor and 960wh battery will get you 80+ miles per charge.  Poppycock!  Maybe with Bob's kid riding it with those dogs at his feet, but not my fat butt.  Let's break it down and see what you can really expect.

The motor is 750w.  That means at full speed, it runs 750w average per hour.  The wattage per hour for the battery is 960wh.  If we divide 960/750 we get 1.28.  This means if you run the motor at full speed for an hour and 20 minutes you will have run the battery out of juice.  Since most E-bikes running at 48v stay around 28-30mph, we'll call it 28mph.  At 28mph for 1.28 hours you would travel 35.84 miles total distance per charge.

Taking the word problem out of it:

(Total Battery WH) / (Total Motor Wattage) = (Total Runtime per Charge) x (Avg MPH) = Realistic Expected Distance Per Charge

Now let's look at this from my favorite factor in this electrical burrito, the Amp.  If you read our previous blog entries you'll know that Wattage is a rating comprised of multiplying Voltage by Amps.  For me, since I already know what the Voltage rating is and voltage generally runs at a constant, if it's a 48v system, it's 48v going through it when on.  If it's 72v there's 72v and so on.  What changes is the applied Amperage.  The changing of the amperage is what allows companies to say a motor operates at one speed, while being able to "Burst" to a higher speed.  This is why I prefer to focus on Amps and amp hours.  It works the same, but for me a little cleaner as it take some of the guestimate work out of things.

Amps:

First, let me preface this by saying, not all companies disclose their amp ratings.  Most use Wattage because it's a rating most people are familiar with due to light bulbs.  

If you want to break it down, you can reverse factor by dividing the rated wattage by the voltage, in most cases 48v or 72v, but check your specs to be sure.  What you'll find is most of your E-bikes at 48v are running 12amps.  This means that at the highest point, when your riding up that big hill, the motor is drawing a maximum of 12amps charge.  Here's the funny thing, though your motor might be rated for a certain wattage, most will accept more amps and hence increase the wattage, as mentioned before, burst mode.  Now there are some, well most motors actually, where if it runs nominally at 12amps, it usually means it can range up to about 15-20amps, let's say 20amps multiplied by 48v equals 960w.  This is how and why there is a peak and a nominal rating for most E-bike motors.  Now, let's look at how this would effect distance per charge of our example unit, the Himiway Zebra.

Battery rated Capacity : 20AH

Now there's no Amp Rating, but I know it's 48v @ 750w so well, divide, 750w/48v = 15Amps

Meaning if we run at full draw of 15amps on a battery that can provide 20Amps per hour, we'll end up with 1.33 hours of runtime @28mph for a total distance of 37.24miles per charge.  

Now, that's not bad for the Himiway Zebra, considering our estimates are pure throttle usage and don't impart any human efforts applied.  But I'm still not convinced you'll get 80+miles, more like 60+ if you pedal along too, which is still a respectable DPC(distance per charge).  We prefer to use the "Scotty Principle" in our ratings.  For those that don't know, it's from Star Trek and means, we under promise and over deliver.  It's what made Mr. Scott the best Chief of Engineering Evva!

Looking at the difference between the two calculations you can see that they're relatively close, but not the same.  This is why I take the Amps calc over the Wattage.  Though Wattage is more conservative, Amps are a direct calculation without adding another variable, ie voltage.  But either way you can easily see that you're not going to get 80+ miles out of a charge on that E-bike.  

     I mean anything IS possible.  If they throw someone's Jockey sized kid on it, or maybe just hire some Jockeys.  I mean, Jockeys are literally hired based on height and weight for the exact purposes of extending the horses speed and distance.  Something for the retired Jockeys to do now!  But when it comes to E-bikes, e-Enduros, e-Motorcycles and any other electric transportation we sell, you can be assured we've tested them, we've rated them and we stand behind them.  Because if you stand in front of one you're likely to get run over!  LOL, thanks for reading!

~John 

As discussed in our previous article, E-bikes and Voltage, Why It Matters, Voltage and AMPs have a relationship in how your e-bike motor works.  If Volts are related to your expected top speed, then AMPs are related to the Torque your electrical motor and system will produce.  Where Voltage could be visualized as the speed of an electrical flow, which would lead to it's relation to top speed, think of AMPs as the depth of the electrical flow.  Similar to a wave hitting a wall.  If the wave is small it doesn't do much, but if it's a large wall of water, it could have enough force to move or even destroy the wall.  We'll get to why that's important too.  This depth of flow has the ability to "push" the motor around, and that motion is then translated into you and your electric vehicle moving forward.  

Sure, I guess, but in a later article we'll talk about how Wattage is a good general rule of thumb, but not the best reference.  Voltage and AMPs are calculated together to come up with Wattage.  For example, you might have a motor that is connected to a 48v battery.  They are then connected to a controller that has a certain rated Amperage capability and all of this is connected by wires that also have a certain ability to carry Amperage.  For the example, let's say it's a smaller 500w rated motor.  There's a 20A capable controller(the electrical "brainbox") and it's all wired for 15A.  Don't freak out, it's normal to "under-wire" an electrical system so you don't overheat the components.  In this case we're all good, check it out below.

Here's the fun math part:

48v X 15A = 720w Peak Output

As you can see, the above wired system will be able to provide more than enough wattage to meet or exceed the draw capability of the motor @500w rating.  We can adjust the number of AMPs in the displays/controllers as well.  Most of the motors are made to exceed their rating for short periods.  That's why you may find some motors that say, they "go up to" the next level of motor wattage rating.  Like our 500w motor mentioned being able to handle the potential 720w we may push to it.  What most companies are doing when they say it goes "up to" is upping the AMPs in a burst or turbo mode to give you more usable wattage from the motor.  

Keeping all of the above in mind, it's important to understand how and with what gauge your e-bike, e-scooter or e-motorcycle is wired.  You can have high capacity, high output controllers and motors, but if you have them wired to low flow power wiring, you'll be choking them off from the performance you expect.   

It's also important to understand the relationship above because you will notice it when you're riding and your voltage drains.  With e-bikes, e-scooters, e-motorcycles and to some degree all electric vehicles, there's a range of Voltage at which the motors can operate.  Your new electric vehicle or micro-mobility might be full speed when you take off for the day with a full charge.  When you're on your way home, you might notice, it doesn't get all the way to the top speed it did earlier.  This is due to that range of voltage operation.  As your battery drains down, that formula above also gets smaller.  Where before your battery was putting our 48v@15A, by the end of your riding, it might only be pushing 40v@15A=600w.

Now that's still more than our example motor would be rated for, but you will notice the reduced performance as the motor is now getting a lower overall wattage.  

Across all of that voltage and wattage drop off, the one thing that remains constant is the Amperage available.  This does fluctuate with your specific need at the time, you might only use 5A-8A at a moment to maintain speed vs. the full 15A to accelerate from a dead stop, but the electrical system is always ready to give you 100% of the torque generated by the AMPs flow at all Voltages the motor and controller can operate under.  Translated from tech speak: You get all the available torque all the time, no matter what your electric vehicle voltage at the time.  

As an additional note, don't be confused over the AMPs a motor or controller can handle and the AMP capability of which the whole system is rated.  You could have a super duper motor and controller, being held back by limited wiring.  Ask what AMP flow or Ampacity the wiring has going to the components and how that matches up with the capabilities of the respective components.

Now, for most of you, that should be good.  You should be able to go out in the world and ask, "How many AMPs is my new e-bike capable of?" and actually know what the salesperson is telling you.  Or maybe you just stumped them.  Good for you!  

But, if you want to get in the mind of our resident "Mad Scientist" and Founder (I'm not actually a scientist and I've never played one on TV, why do you think me "mad"?) keep reading below.  

First I have to say, I'm not mad, maybe a little crazy, but I like to think we all are in our own way.  As long as that crazy doesn't hurt anyone, who cares if I have a wild head of poofy mad scientist hair and live in a castle on the hill.   I don't like in a castle on the hill, but the hair thing is true.  More so, I just look at things a little differently and that's the same here at E-Powersport.  Enough about me, let's talk about AMPs.  So you kept reading and want to get deeper on Amperage and what you need to look for in your next purchase.  Yes or No?  

Yes, good, let's climb in this rabbit hole......

We already gave you a lot to work with above, what more can I say?  Well, to start with, Gauges!  No not like the speedometer, but I like how you think.  The gauges of the wires being used as well as the connectors and battery BMS.  That right, to really get to the beginning in all this, we need to go directly to the power source, the freaking battery and BMS.  These are both rated at certain Ampacities.  They will normally have 2 ratings, one that is nominal or normal functioning AMP rating and one that's the MAX, normally expected for very short periods of time.  The wiring coming from the battery pack, is rated for a certain Ampacity and stated at its MAX AMP Rating, but wait, there's more....

The connector used to connect the battery pack to the motor has, what?  That's right, a certain Ampacity.  And so on and so on and so on, till we finally get to the motor that turns all the AMPs that finally made it into mechanical energy.    Woohoo!  Now go raise some heck with your new knowledge!  

Still there?  OK, what else can I say about AMPs and how freaking important it is to know the overall Ampacity of your e-bike, e-scooter, e-motorcycle or other electric vehicle?  From my perspective, Voltage and AMPs are a much better way to think about your new transportation's capabilities.  Wattage is a fluffy bunny # that doesn't mean much when you start adding things like weight into the equations or by that I mean real world use.  As we had shown above, those short burst can be as high as 50% increase in total power consumption.  Forget Wattage and Watt Hours, that's for home use.  On these, you want to focus on Voltage and how many AMPs are being delivered to the motor over what time period.  Are they giving you an AMP boost capability, like we talked about and how will that effect your distance, or are these nominally functional AMPs for a steady AMP flow?  Don't get me wrong, I think Wattage has it's place, but it's more about usage than a scaled rating.  

Another important aspect of AMPs and AMP flow is how that can relate to usage and distance.  As the AMP flow usage fluctuates it takes certain amounts of the Batteries Ampacity or as batteries are rated, Amp Hours or AH.  This could be used to calculate "time x amps used" to display remaining Amp Hours available in the battery pack.  There's already the ability to view Volts left in a battery on most e-bikes, e-scooters, e-motorcycles, but knowing how many AMPs are left for draw could be a more accurate indicator of time/miles left on a charge.  And I guess, you could always slap the two together and give a remaining wattage level of the battery.  But I think the more discerning or power user, will want to know the Volt/AMPs too.

Here's a crazy thing to think about:

1 Joule = 1W per Sec = 1NM (Newton Meter)

Do we really need three of the same metric?  What the What?!?!

When motors are measured for Wattage it's in hours.  Our previous 500w motor example would be expected to use 500w an hour, not per second.  Keep that in mind, now the Newton Meter is a normal measurement for Torque of an Electric Motor.  Most 500w motors are rated @60nm.  That means a 500w motor is using 60nm, or 60watts per second, or 60 joules to propel you at its top power usage.  Even crazier is there's no rated Watt.  A Watt is as Watt, but a Watt can be applied to a measurement of time, there hasn't been a standardization across the Electric Vehicle or other electric industries.  However, both a Joule and a NM have been set in ratings.  Speaking of wheels and ratings, one of my favorite teams to reference for knowledge are the team at GRIN Technologies in Canada.  Rather than reinvent what they've already defined in both a deeply technical and eloquent way, I'm going to provide a link to their related article here.  

They get so deep, I use their tools, just awesome stuff:

Futility of Motor Power Ratings

There's more we can cover, we could talk about how electricity doesn't actually flow in a wire, but is a wireless transmission being provided by a series of magnetic fields generated across the wire.  But we'll save that for later....

As my time has ventured deeper into the Electric vehicle world, I'm finding some serious animosity towards these amazing machines.  It would seem that most of the comparisons to horses and the coming of the automobile are warranted.  The concerns are also warranted, but in some ways I think slightly off perception.  Some people now, like people before, see that the world will become one thing or another.  That only one thing can win in a fight that doesn't exist.  Yes, that's right, a fight that doesn't exist.  Unless you have consciously chosen to be anti-fact on this, the majority of the population has agreed, since I can remember, that, "We will need to end our dependence on Fossil Fuels before they run out."  This is that time.

"You're power is still mostly made by coal!", shouts the online troll.  Yes, but it doesn't have to be and we're all moving towards a world where it isn't.  A World where, when we mine a limited resource like coal, oil, natural gas or other organically created fuel source, we do it for high value reasons.  When I look to this future, I see a place where people are able to move very freely, cost effectively like never before.  Giving them back time and money they'll need with inflation and other socio-economic pressures.  I see where fuel use of organics is limited to areas of larger and more scale efficient transportation.  Not when moving our average 200lb American bodies a few miles back and forth but to more efficiently transport millions of tons when needed.  Or in the rare instances when electric just doesn't cut it.  

I completely understand the resistance to change, I saw Wayne's World.  Again, some of it is justified.  Having worked in Recruiting/HR in Tech for the last 20+ years I can tell you, lots of people will need help with the career change.  There will still be the ones, the Combustion Engine Mechanics, who are amazing at what they do, they will be the ones to benefit the most.  So, if you consider yourself an "OK, Auto mechanic" you might want to start looking to change your skillset.  These are usually the people in an industry that get squeezed out first.  Meaning, they'll most likely pay more to keep the person with the most knowledge and a couple of cheaper people for that person to work with on projects.  This also means as the world shifts to electric more and more technicians will be needed.  That should be great news to you and honestly you thought to yourself, "Oh, crap, that's me, I'm the just OK mechanic".  Because for you, changing your skillset to electric will take some education, but it's no where near as complicated as a combustion engine.  Which brings me back to why the really great combustion engine mechanics will be highly sought and get paid even better than before.  

Example from the Tech Space: When I started my career as a recruiter, COBOL was on it's way out in favor of newer languages.  Almost no one wanted to learn it, no one wanted to higher anyone for it, unless in finance or government.  Before I started E-Powersport.com, I heard from someone I know that still coded in COBOL.  They got a $500,000 job offer, because there's less than 20 people on the planet that could or would take the job.  Remember, there will always be legacy cars to fix and for this industry, which is really more of an Energy Conversion than anything else, there will be new and more valuable uses for the Combustion Engine.

Before I started the company, I went around town and checked out bicycle shops, motorcycle shops and Powersport companies.  One experience always stands out to me and is a big reason I started E-Powersport.com.

I went into one of the largest local Powersport companies down here.  They carry all the big names.  I was ready to buy or not, I'd been hearing how hard it was then to get electric vehicles, even a mini-moto.  I walked in, the smell of gas and new rubber coming thru my mask.  The salesman walked up to me and asked, "Hi, how can I help you today?".

To which I responded, "I'm looking for something that runs on electric.  Can you show me what you have?"

His eyes tilted upwards and from behind his mask I could see him laughing and trying to hold it back, "We don't have electric.  Our stuff has motors in it."

It was in that moment I realized, these companies, the ones that are already in place, just like the Detroit Brands and Tesla, they have no interest in this until it becomes mainstream.  Then they'll tell you they've been doing it all this time.  But the consumer isn't as blind as many larger companies think.  The Information Age has allowed the World Consumer to be educated to what's going on, if they want.  I point to this, because this type of abrupt change within these companies also leads to feelings of fear and animosity.  "We were going to stand strong with gas, but now the world view has changed and the company's doing it, but I don't agree."  If these feelings aren't addressed within the organizations and with the customer bases, they will also cause issues for further adoption within the markets as a whole. 

But, I digress, my overall point is that, We don't need to fear electric vehicles the way we've been afraid of changes before.  It may change the way you get your groceries and how much you spend doing it, but also help to lower what you spend on them by taking usage pressures and hence overall costs off larger transportation needs.  And yes, both will co-exist, petrol cars and electric cars on the roads for a while.  So there's no reason we can't follow the rules of the road, even if we're online.  Play safe, Be Uniquely U and lift each other up.